Kurdish band Nishtiman performed their second album “Kobane” Toronto, Canada, Sep. 29, 2017. The band unites musicians from the different Kurdish communities of Iraqi Kurdistan Iran, and Turkey.
For a pedigree of musical continuity, you can’t beat Kurdistan. The oldest known notation of music dates from the ancient Hurrian kingdom, in the second millenium BC. Two sacred hymns recovered by archaeologists from that ancient civilization, located in the heart of today’s Kurdistan, are in the same mode and bear a visible kinship to the Kurdish folk music of today. The modern Kurdish folk movement is fragmented: variant scenes in Iraqi Kurdistan, Iran, Syria, or Turkey, as well as a Kurdish diaspora in Europe and North America. In Turkey, singing in the Kurdish language was against the law, punished by imprisonment and physical abuse, until very recently. In Iran, however, it thrived, and in newly self-governing Kurdistan, I’m sure it must be undergoing quite a renaissance. Other than a few stray pieces on general collections of middle eastern music, the only recordings I have are one by instrumentalists Tahmoures and Sohrab Pournazeri, with accompanying vocals by Rojan, entitled simply Kurdish Folk Music, and a cd called Kurdish Dances featuring Mohammad Bhamani on dozak and sornâ, ‘Abdollâh Nabiollâhi on dobol, and vocals by ‘Abdollâh Qorbâni. But I heard a marvelous live concert last year, at the Agha Khan Museum in Toronto. The first thing that strikes the listener is the music’s accessibility. The melodies are catchy and upbeat, and not buried in the microtonal intricasies and melisma that makes it hard for outsiders to follow middle eastern music. You could easily party to this music, in a modern disco, though it is purely traditional.
There is more to this bleak story of a young man in a juvenile detention facility than just another bit of “social realism” or the usual formula of redemption-through-sport. There are layers and layers in Alan Sillitoe’s story, and Ralph Richardson’s film gets many of them across. It’s about being controlled, being used, being forced to play roles for others, and finally rebelling against it in a way that makes some sense. The actors clearly understood these subtleties, and avoided clichés in interpreting the roles. Tom Courtney became a star on the strength of this performance. Michael Redgrave, by then a venerable icon, worked every scene with him in delicate balance. This film still has a high reputation in the British cinema, and justly so.
